


Leandra's Room, Revisited

by 0Rocky41_7



Series: I Guess This is Happening: Theodora Hawke [11]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, Emotional Baggage, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Dragon Age II Quest - All That Remains, Purple Hawke (Dragon Age), Rogue Hawke (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28886007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0Rocky41_7/pseuds/0Rocky41_7
Summary: Hawke hasn't entered her mother's room since Leandra's passing, and she's not sure she can do it now, but at least Merrill is there to help.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Merrill (Dragon Age), Hawke/Merrill (Dragon Age)
Series: I Guess This is Happening: Theodora Hawke [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111598
Kudos: 9





	Leandra's Room, Revisited

**Author's Note:**

> This is a kink meme prompt I got off tumblr, and based off my first DAII playthrough in which I didn't know things and everyone had a bad time.
> 
> See more about Hawke on her [tumblr tag.](https://imakemywings.tumblr.com/tagged/theodora%20hawke)
> 
> I think Hawke and Leandra had a complicated relationship (imo there are signs in-game that Hawke was effectively a "third parent" and a lot of the parental responsibility Leandra should have shouldered were shifted over to Hawke), which makes it all the more difficult to grieve her (especially when Hawke is reluctant to admit any of her mother's failings).
> 
> Kink meme prompt from [here](https://dragonage-kink.dreamwidth.org/91059.html?thread=365664179&posted=1#cmt366427827).

“I should clean it up. Mother’s room.”

Hawke had mumbled the words the night before, when the fire was no more than a red glow faintly wobbling over the rug, and Merrill had been sure that Hawke was asleep. She had considered pretending that _she_ was asleep, because she had never truly known what to say about Leandra Hawke’s death (not about the event itself, nor about the gruesome way it came about). But feeling this would be a dereliction of her duty as a girlfriend, she offered a tentative:

“That sounds nice. I can help you.”

Perhaps Hawke _was_ half-asleep, for she said nothing else after that, leaving Merrill to lie awake contemplating what it meant, the statement.

It hadn’t come up that morning: Hawke had trotted down to the dining room with all her usual perkiness, and with half a cup of coffee down, had laughed and joked with Merrill as usual, over plates of scrambled eggs and toasted biscuits with jam. _Perhaps she doesn’t remember_ , Merrill thought. It was just as well, wasn’t it? Hawke hadn’t been in that room since Leandra died in her arms, and had once drunkenly confessed to Varric that she couldn’t bear to go inside.

It couldn’t be easy, Merrill thought, being the last of the Hawkes.

But when Merrill came back from her late morning walk, which took her in a meandering route around her favorite gardens in Hightown (she rotated, so she revisited each garden several times a week, but not every day) and down to the Lowtown markets, where she could try to pick up news of the alienage from other elves (whether or not they were keen to talk on her was often dependent on their view of the Dalish as a whole, but she had at least garnered a reputation for a ready willingness to help her neighbors while living there), before stringing an unhurried path back to the Amell estate, Hawke was standing outside Leandra’s door, with the kind of serious, trepidatious look almost never seen on her face.

“Theodora?” It wasn’t often that Hawke’s birth name came up—in fact, Merrill only knew it because she’d heard Leandra use it once when she stopped by to pick Hawke up from her uncle’s house—but this seemed like an appropriately sober situation.

It got Hawke’s attention, and when she turned and tried to smile away the heaviness in the air, even Merrill was not convinced.

“Oh, hey, Daisy.” Merrill wasn’t sure when Hawke had started using Varric’s nickname for her, but she remembered how it had made her cheeks flush and her heart stutter in the days before she confessed to Hawke. It still made her heart tighten a bit, as if she were physically responding to Hawke’s affection. “Thought you’d be out a while longer.”

Merrill tilted her head to one side, then started to slowly mount the grand staircase up to where Hawke stood. For a few moments, they stood in silence before Leandra’s door, and Merrill brushed her fingers against Hawke’s.

“Are you going to go in?” she asked at last.

“I should,” Hawke said. She shifted from foot to foot, and rolled her shoulders, but didn’t move from that spot.

“You don’t have to,” Merrill reminded her, nibbling the inside of her cheek. Connecting with others was…not Merrill’s forte. But to stand there helpless, hands thrown up, while someone she loved was in pain? That was intolerable; she’d just have to muddle her way through it. Delicately, she laced her fingers with Hawke’s, feeling the rough callouses on Hawke’s hand press against the cuts on Merrill’s palm, where she drew blood for her spells (Bethany had used a healing spell for them in the past, but Merrill had never thought to learn it from her, and anyway, she just kept cutting them open anew).

“But I should,” Hawke insisted, more firmly.

“I’ll come with you, then,” Merrill said. She squeezed Hawke’s hand and pressed close to her, resting her head on Hawke’s shoulder for a moment. “You’re not alone, _ma vhenan_ ,” she murmured. “I’m here.” Hawke nodded slowly, and squeezed Merrill’s hand before moving forward to open up the door.

Leandra’s room looked exactly as it had the day she died. The bed was neatly made, covers tucked under the pillows, quilts spread evenly over the mattress. Her shoes were lined up along the bottom of the armoire, as though she had yet to choose an outfit for the day, except for the gap where the pair she had worn to Gamlen’s that day were missing. The only new thing was the layer of dust that cushioned everything in the room, and drifted aplenty through the air when Hawke crossed over to open the curtains (Bodahn or Orana must have come in to close them, after).

Merrill lingered by the doorway, and she could see how tight Hawke’s jaw was as she jerked open the armoire doors.

“I suppose we should get rid of these,” she said, staring in at Leandra’s clothes.

“We don’t have to,” Merrill said.

“No sense in hanging onto them.” Hawke started to pull things down and fold them haphazardly, to toss them onto the end of the bed. “I’m sure the chantry would…find some use for them…” Perhaps it was best if Merrill just stood there and gave her presence to Hawke, she decided. “I don’t need them, and Mother certainly doesn’t.”

On the bedside tables, Merrill could see little trinkets of Leandra’s, unmoved from where she had arranged them: a gilded egg studded with gems; a small porcelain rabbit, hand-painted with tiny blue patterns; a statuette of Andraste with a sunburst behind her head which appeared to be real gold. Merrill wandered over to have a closer look, and was startled by a sharp gasp from Hawke. Thinking she might have pricked herself on something, Merrill turned, and saw her clutching a beaded black dress.

“Did you hurt yourself? Is it bleeding?” Merrill asked, hurrying to her side. “Let me see.”

“It’s nothing.” But Hawke’s voice sounded thick as pudding, and Merrill could see how hard she was swallowing, how fast she was blinking, trying to keep herself from weeping. “She, uh…she wore this to Father’s funeral,” she explained, her voice trailing off in a whisper. Hawke lifted her head, like she could tip the tears back into her eyes, and took deep, shaking breaths. Merrill went to take the dress, to set it with the growing pile of Leandra’s things on the bed, but Hawke’s fingers were dug so tight into the fabric she couldn’t tug it free. “It doesn’t matter,” Hawke said at last, after another purposeful breath. “She doesn’t need it.” She put the dress with the other things, and Merrill watched.

“It must have been hard, after your father died. I don’t remember much about my father; I only saw him at Arlathven after I joined the Sabrae, but um…I didn’t mean to make this about me. Sorry.”

“He…handled a lot of things,” Hawke said, picking up the copy of the Chant of Light by Leandra’s bed and flipping through it. “Mother…” She paused, looking down at the inside cover of the book, and her hands began to tremble. “She did her best. But we all missed Father.” Her voice was reduced again to a whisper, and she tucked the book back inside the bedside stand, choosing instead to grab, seemingly at random, the gilded egg, and toss it onto the pile with Leandra’s clothes. Then she strode to the vanity, and began rifling through the drawers.

Merrill bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, chewing on the inside of her cheek. She was thrown back to the night of Leandra’s death, and how she had sat beside Hawke in her room, and could not think of a single thing to say. _My heart is broken with yours_ , she’d said at last. Not sad because she knew or truly grieved Leandra Hawke, but because _Theodora_ was heartbroken, and Merrill could not bear to see her suffer. If the difference mattered, Hawke had never said so. Merrill picked the decorative egg out of the pile of Leandra’s things to examine it, her great green eyes flitting up to take Hawke in every few seconds.

Hawke was piling Leandra’s personal effects on the vanity table: a whalebone comb; a pearl-backed hairbrush; several bottles of perfume in various stages of consumption; a handful of hair decorations, including a finely-wrought silver flower on a clip.

“She’s had this brush as long as I can remember,” Hawke said, lifting it up. Caught in its thick bristles were several strands of Leandra’s hair. “She must have taken it with her when she left Kirkwall. But it’s cracked, because Carver and I got in fight once and I dared him to hit me but he missed and it hit the wall instead…Mother was _furious_. I think they heard her yelling in Val Royeaux.” Merrill could see the crack along the back of the brush, and a tiny bit missing at the base of it.

“Why didn’t she buy a new one?” she asked. “After you came here?” Hawke paused, as if she’d never thought about it before.

“I don’t know. Maybe she liked this one.” Hawke set the brush down with the other things, and looked over the piles she had made so far. “Maker’s tears,” she swore under her breath, and took a seat on the edge of the bed. Merrill promptly abandoned the egg and took a seat beside Hawke.

“You don’t have to do this,” she reminded Hawke, keeping her voice soft, as though she might shatter Hawke by speaking too loudly. Once, she had believed Theodora Hawke made of iron: unbendable, unbreakable; the Champion of Kirkwall! But since Leandra’s death, she had begun to see the cracks, and she’d felt a flash of guilt for ever believing Hawke was invincible.

“Mother, she always wanted to come back here,” Hawke said, unprompted, after a long silence. “I never realized, until we were here. But my whole life, she wanted to be here.”

“Do you think she regretted leaving?” Merrill could kick herself the second the question was out. “I mean, of course she didn’t _regret it_ regret it, but I suppose a part of her was always going to miss home, wasn’t it? That’s just natural! It must have been hard adjusting!”

“I think part of her did regret it.” Hawke’s voice came out a ragged whisper, and she pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead, resting her elbows on her knees, her feet on the edge of the massive bedframe. “Life was…hard. Being poor, having two apostates in the family…having three children. It was…” Something was catching in Hawke’s throat, but she kept trying to speak. “I knew she couldn’t take care of us. It had to be me. That’s what Father meant for—he knew it would be me. He must have. But then I let Carver die. And Bethany. And now—” Merrill wanted to tell her to stop, it sounded like she was choking, but she kept going. “—now they’re all together, and it’s just me here. I fucked it up, Merrill. I just…I couldn’t do it.” Finally, Hawke could not speak anymore, and she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t hurt, and she couldn’t stop herself from crying. Seeing the tears well up in those usually sparkling brown eyes dug something sharp and jagged into Merrill’s heart. It came all at once, and when Merrill put a hand on her back, Hawke leaned over to put her head in Merrill’s lap, and sobbed with great breaths that wracked her entire body, until she gasped for breath and sucked air in so that Merrill worried she couldn’t breathe properly, until Merrill thought she would exhaust herself entirely.

“You did your best, _lethallan_ ,” Merrill assured her, stroking her silky black hair. “Sometimes things just…happen.”

“It was my fault,” Hawke wept, hiding her face against Merrill’s legs, so her tears could not be seen. “All three of them. I should have done better. I should have saved them. If I had been quicker—!”

“You did everything you could.” Merrill had not known Bethany Hawke long, nor Carver at all, but she could see how Hawke would do anything for them, and she could not imagine how Hawke would have let them out of her grip if she had any control over it at all. The exact story of what happened to Bethany in the Deep Roads had never come out—neither Hawke nor Varric could stomach talking about it—but Merrill felt certain that if Hawke could have sacrificed herself for Bethany’s sake, she would have. And Leandra…it was a miracle they had figured out the danger she was in at _all_ ; could they truly be faulted for taking too long to do it? Merrill still shuddered to think of the _thing_ that had fallen into Hawke’s embrace after she had cut down Quentin; the smell of the room alone was enough to haunt her most uneasy dreams.

“She’s really gone.” Hawke sat up and looked around the room, tears still dripping down her cheeks as she tried to control her heaving breaths. “I kept thinking, even though I knew it was bullshit, that she’d come back. It felt like…she was out to tea with Gamlen. But she’d be back later, and I’d tell her about everything that happened when she was gone. I have to keep telling myself that’s stupid, and she’s not coming back. Ever. Not her, or Father, or Carver, or…” The tears overtook her, and Merrill pressed close to her side. “—Andraste’s tears, _Bethany_ …”

“I can’t take your pain away, _ma vhenan_ ,” Merrill whispered, “but you aren’t alone. I will be your family, as long as you want me here.”

Another sob tore free of Hawke’s throat, and for a moment, Merrill thought she had said something insensitive, the wrong thing, she _always_ said the wrong thing, but then Hawke grabbed her and clutched Merrill to her, pressing her teary face against the top of Merrill’s head.

“You’re a fucking jewel, Merrill,” she choked out around the weepy spasms of her throat. “I don’t deserve you.”

“We deserve each other,” Merrill disagreed, holding still with her face against Hawke’s trembling breast, hunched at an awkward angle in her lover’s embrace. “And we’re there for each other. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Like our own little clan. You, and me, and Varric, and Isabela, and Fenris, and Anders, and Sebastian.”

It took Hawke many more minutes to stop the flow of tears, and then she abruptly released Merrill, threw an arm back to the clothing pile behind them, and seized the egg.

“Here,” she said, pressing it into Merrill’s had. “You want it? It’s yours.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

“She’s _dead_ , Daisy. She doesn’t want it anymore. I’d rather it went to you than some pawnshop.” Merrill nodded, and cupped her hand around the egg. “I wish she’d gotten to know you better,” Hawke said softly, rising to her feet. “I keep thinking that. You always imagine your parents at your wedding, don’t you? You just kind of… _assume_ they’ll be there. I keep thinking she could have gone with you on a walk, or you could have planted something together here, or…” More forceful swallowing as Hawke tried to stave off another wave of tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, when she had gotten a grip on herself again, a few errant tears streaking down her face.

“I know how you feel, sort of,” Merrill said, rising off the bed. “When I lost my clan, I…” Even now, speaking of them, Merrill’s throat threatened to close up. “I didn’t see how I could go on, for a little while,” she confessed lowly. “I thought it was a mistake that I had ever gone to the Sabrae; that they were all dead because of me, and I should have died with them. But that’s not right, and you told me so.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t control their decisions, and you couldn’t control your mother’s, or your brother’s, or your sister’s.”

“That’s…” Hawke trailed off, and gave up, shaking her head.

“When Falon’Din comes, none of us can stop him,” Merrill said gently, tucking the egg into the pouch at her waist, and moving to take Hawke’s hand again. “That’s not a failing of ours.”

“I don’t want to be the last Hawke.” Managing Hawke’s grief was like peeling the leaves from a leek—there was layer after layer after layer. Now her voice had grown so small, Merrill felt sure there were not many leaves left.

“I don’t want to be the last Sabrae,” Merrill said. She had meant it to be…reassuring, or perhaps merely empathetic, but as she said it, there was a wobble in her voice, and she realized she was looking to Hawke, as lost as her lover was now.

“I guess we’ll have to be the last together, then,” Hawke replied with a watery laugh, which sounded more like a prelude to tears than an expression of mirth, drawing Merrill into a hug. Merrill burrowed her face into Hawke’s shoulder and clung to her like a ship to anchor.

“That sounds less lonely,” she agreed. She did not keep track of the time ‘til Hawke pulled away, and looked around.

“Will you help me take this stuff to the chantry? Sebastian can help us figure out what to do with it,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Hawke said, nodding. “It should go to someone who will use it.” She was taking those slow, careful breaths again.

“If it makes you feel better to keep it, you should keep it.” Merrill couldn’t help but try again. But Hawke shook her head.

“No, it won’t. We’ll keep some of her things…” She moved the brush away from the other things grouped on the vanity, and then pushed them all back towards the mirror, as if one of the two of them might mistake it for things to be given away. “…but the rest I want to get rid of.”

“Okay.” Hawke glanced around again, and snatched the silver hair ornament from the vanity to pin it Merrill’s hair. Those hands that Merrill had seen spin daggers at blinding speed, and nail a would-be thief through the forehead at twenty paces tried so hard to be careful as she brushed and gathered Merrill’s hair to pin the flower there. “What do you think?” she asked, gesturing to the mirror. A small smile curved Merrill’s lips up, and she touched the flower.

“It’s very lovely,” she said. “But shouldn’t you have it?”

“I’d break it,” Hawke said, shaking her head. “Maybe we’ll just keep it here.” She reached to take it back, and Merrill, without thinking, stepped back. “Do you want it?” Hawke asked with some surprise. Perhaps she thought Merrill was only humoring her?

“Only if you don’t,” Merrill said quickly. “She was your mother, her things are all yours now.” Quickly, she reached up to take down the flower, thinking it was terribly selfish of her to be taking the possessions of Hawke’s dead mother.

“I like it on you,” Hawke said, trying to smile for the first time since they’d opened Leandra’s door. “A daisy for my Daisy.” It was what she said every time she plucked a flower while they were walking and offered it to Merrill. Several times, Merrill had pointed out that these were not, in fact, daisies, but Hawke just laughed.

“But Hawke, this is a—” But Hawke was already shaking her head, a near smile on her lips as she turned away from the vanity. They gathered Leandra’s clothes and shoes into a couple of baskets, to carry up to the chantry, and Hawke caught Merrill’s hand as they headed for the estate’s door.

“Thanks, Merrill,” she said. Merrill managed a smile in return, though the weight of the morning kept some of the pleasure from it.

“It’s what you do for family,” she said.

“Yeah. It is,” Hawke agreed, and she kept a hold on Merrill’s hand as they left the house.

**Author's Note:**

> A personal note this time. Going through the stuff of someone you loved to decide what to keep and what to get rid of has to be one of the worst feelings in the world. I had to clean out my dad's house after he died, and it was not a fun experience (though at least in my case, my mom and sister were fine, so I had help). The sentiment that Adora expresses--feeling that Leandra is going to "come back" at some point--is drawn from my own experience. "Forever" and "never" are such difficult concepts for us to comprehend, I think, so it took a lot of beating it into my head I was never going to see dad again before it "stuck." So here's to me of four years ago, and the weird ways that grief keeps sneaking up to whack you in the back of the head.
> 
> [On tumblr](https://imakemywings.tumblr.com/post/640882239092244480/leandras-room-revisited) | [On Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/2006054)
> 
> If you liked this, you might like like [pride, and the hurt that followed it](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13627671)


End file.
